


For Wisdom Comes After

by sparklight



Category: Ancient Greek Religion & Lore
Genre: (don't come looking for actual vore in here this is just greek mythology things you know how it is), Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Metaphysical Vore, Mythology References
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-13
Updated: 2020-04-13
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:08:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23636554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sparklight/pseuds/sparklight
Summary: Zeus as King of the Gods is a wise ruler, but he didn't quite come about his wisdom in an honest or traditional manner.Fear and youth makes one react in instinctual ways.
Relationships: Metis/Zeus (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 11





	For Wisdom Comes After

Hindsight is perfect, wisdom comes with lived experience.

Zeus is young - for everyone, even gods, are young once - when he meets Metis. Fifteen. She's radiant, striking; blinds and binds him with equal measure with her wit and her beauty both. He's nineteen when he makes his first attack on his father, forcing him to disgorge his siblings with Metis' help.

Ten years later, and the Titans (parents, cousins, uncles and aunts; relatives all, but divine essences are as closely tied to each other as they're violently unfamiliar with each other) have fallen. Some punished, some not, others rewarded as they sided with the younger generation. Twenty eight earthly lived years. Nothing, in the greater course of things, and they're all still giddy with their victory when Gaia whispers madness in Zeus' ears. True, prophetic madness, but madness nonetheless, and Zeus is young.

He loves Metis. Terribly, deeply, fearfully, and young as he is, acts instinctively at the future threat to his position, to the so very newly established order of the world. It's not even in the only manner he can think of to truly neutralize the threat Metis - or rather, her potential future son - embodies. It's reflexive reaction after he comes back from having brooded elsewhere, from having accidentally met a nymph named Himalia. Confusion, defensiveness. Desperation subsumes her entirely within him, and when it is over, there is only Zeus, sitting on the floor of the bedchamber, alone.

There's a whisper in his head. Knowledge.

This was rash. Perhaps unnecessary, perhaps not, but _rash_. (If Gaia and Ouranos meant it as retaliation, they have succeeded.) Wisdom comes with lived experience, with age, with thought. None of which Zeus really had before this.

It's Hestia who finds him sitting there, curled up like a child newly born.

"Zeus? What happened?" She closes the door behind her, kneels beside him. He flinches from her touch, looks up. Guilt and loss both carve out darkness in his eyes, around his mouth, so openly vulnerable when there's only the shy beginnings of the beard that will later crown his chin.

"I swallowed her," he says, slowly, "I swallowed my wife, Hestia."

She stares at him, and perhaps the only reason she does not flee his presence is for the hollow stare at the floor, accepting, guilty, lost. He's the oldest of them, having lived several more years than they, and yet, the youngest also. Slowly, she reaches out again. A hand on his shoulder - broad, strong, trembling underneath her fingers - and he closes his eyes, bright and pale.

"Why?"

"I didn't know what else to do. I didn't know _what_ to do." It's so _plaintive_ , she can't find any anger or disgust, and so finally embraces him instead, folds his face in against her neck, a hand in his hair, short but growing out.

"And now?"

Now...

"Find out if she was pregnant at all first. If she wasn't, divorce her. If she was..." He trails off. "I don't know."

The same thing. They can both hear it in his voice, knows it by the way he shudders. Guilty. But for the sake of the newly established order, perhaps it was necessary. Hestia sighs. Breathes in charged air and rain-smell, the still-lingering scent of corn and ripe fruit. He's young. They all are. Wisdom comes with lived experience and hindsight is perfect, but sometimes there are no easy solutions.


End file.
